MATT FURNISS: There's eight games today, so there's one
early game kicking off in 15 minutes, QPR-Norwich.
Then six games at 3 o'clock, and then one late
game at half 5:00.
So yeah, it'll get busy around 3 o'clock.
We are the content and customer service team, so we
will provide all the stats for our Twitter
feeds, for our clients.
Editorially, we'll be doing features, packs for TV
companies, sending everything out to the newspapers.
Whereas the guys in the other room in the operation's team,
they'll b recording all the data, and they will be, sort
of handling everything that goes on behind the scenes.
We can't plan what's going to happen.
We have a set routine of things we need to do.
We have a list of everything we need to do, but, I mean,
football is unpredictable.
You can never tell what's going to happen.
So this is our analysis room.
At the moment, they're analyzing the game live.
We have a guy for each team and a checker.
So if anyone has any questions about the dates they're
putting in, they'll flag it up, and then the checker can
check by just going back, replaying the footage, and
then re-inputting the data.
On certain games, we record about 1,800 actions a game,
so, I mean around 900 a team.
Obviously it's going to be a lot more if you're analyzing
Barcelona than you are Stoke or QPR or Norwich.
We have about 200 applications every summer
for operations guys.
Maybe four or five will get through to the final section
where they'll be trained up.
I mean, hand-eye coordination has to be amazing.
I couldn't do this myself.
I'm too slow.
But these guys, I mean, a few of them have been
here for a few years.
So they build up a great skill set to be able to do this.
SAM GREEN: I definitely could not do it.
And I know the hand-eye coordination they have, so
it's a pretty intense--
you've got to be doing it.
It's live.
You're 45 minutes late.
They've got a little bit of time to go back and check
errors during the breaks, and we obviously go through every
match after it's happened.
But while they're doing it, it's a pretty intense 45, 50
minutes at a time where you don't have much let-up, and
it's a pretty impressive demonstration of skills.
I'm not sure what skills, and how they've built them up, but
it is more than I can do, certainly.
MATT FURNISS: It takes a unique kind of person.
I mean, if you're good at computer games, it helps.
And you have to have a really, really good knowledge of
football as well.
So the speed at which everything happens, you have
to be able to tell which player is which, at least in a
blink of an eye.
So if someone is wearing yellow boots, you might be
able to say that means that's that player.
And sometimes, I mean, you might have Rafael and Fabio,
two twins on the team.
So you've got to know the characteristics of
each player as well.
Despite they're both from different wings, if something
was to come into the box, you might need to know if one
wears white boots, one has tape around his socks or
something like that.
So yeah, you can pick that up.
A lot of it is communication.
If one of them has a question, he might say
can you double check.
A defender may have made a clearance, but it might have
been a long ball instead.
So they'd ask to check it to just check that replay, and
then if it needs correcting, correct it straight away.
They'll say, here we can replay the data, and they can
double check and pause and see.
So quite often, if there's a deflection on a goal, and
we're not sure if it's a known goal, we can then slow it
down, replay it, pause it, so we can take different angles
and have a look at whether it is a known goal or not.
Luckily, the early game today is a dull affair between QPR
and Norwich.
I say that now, and when you film again at nine minutes,
it'll be 4-0.
But yeah, I mean, there's not much going on at the moment
until something big happens, maybe a
goal, red card, penalty.
We're liaising.
We have commentators for the game across the world
providing them with facts and data.
So yeah, just waiting for something big to happen, and
then we can get down and do our job.
BRADY HARAN: How common is it that you will pull together
some fact or amazing piece of trivia, send it off from your
computer, and then you hear it come across on the TV a minute
or two later?
MATT FURNISS: Yeah, quite often.
I mean, there was a famous one in the World Cup a few years
ago when Rob Green disastrously let Clint
Dempsey's shot through his hands against the USA.
And straightaway, our team were on to it, and we
remembered that he'd actually made the most mistakes leading
to goals in the Premier League that season as well.
ITV mentioned it, and we were being told on [INAUDIBLE] that
across the world, commentators were mentioning our fact that
it was an [INAUDIBLE].
So that was a really nice moment for us.
And then, yeah, you quite often--
I see Mark's doing the commentator
support at the moment.
You'll hear something that he's just put across to them
within 30 seconds.
So that's as quick as is it can happen.
So say if now there's a red card, we could research a fact
about that red card.
Say it might be the player's eighth red card.
I need two players.
I've got more.
Or they're the team with the most red cards this season.
We could put that straight to the commentator, and then they
can have it out and mention it on screen within a minute.
So, I mean, while the action is fresh and while the stat is
fresh, they'll have it out there.
BRADY HARAN: The commentators sound so knowledgeable when
they do that.
Does that frustrate you and make you think, you
didn't do know that.
That was because of me or is that--
MATT FURNISS: In fairness, the commentators do a lot of
research before the game.
We're helping them out.
That's our job.
QPR just won a penalty.
Norwich had given it away.
So I can have a quick look now to see how many penalties have
been given this season for each side using our database.
Right.
So we can have a quick look now to see Norwich's record
this season running a report.
This season, QPR have won two penalties.
Both of them have been against Norwich, home and away, and
they've had both of them saved.
SAM GREEN: QPR has now had the last three
penalties in a row saved.
So I'll put that straight through now to this guy who's
doing the commentary.
The decision to retain a player or sign a player is, I
mean, it's literally a multimillion pound or euro or
dollar or whatever, it's a multi-million something
investment.
I can't imagine many other walks of life, many other
businesses where you would just take that based upon
someone's feel and intuition, and you'd have someone sitting
there watching them do their job.
It doesn't make sense.
You'd normally have numbers in some way of quantifying that.
MATT FURNISS: The game ended in a board draw, not the best
for our analysis.
There's not too much to talk about.
So we're trying to put together some
page-matched facts now.
QPR, now five unbeaten in the Premier League, which is the
best run in the Premier League since March '95.
And obviously, want to to know about how Harry Redknapp has
drawn more games nil-nil than any other manager in the
Premier League, 62nd that was.
What we do now is we just put together the page-matched
facts, save all the stats for the game, send them out to the
media, and then just wait for the 3 o'clock games and the
fun to start.
I'd say it's been an above-average day for action.
There's quite a lot going on.
There's six games at the moment.
Lukas Podolski just scored for Arsenal, but it seems to be
disallowed.
But, yeah, I mean, it's been pretty hectic.
I mean, there's a flurry of goals around the midway point
of the first half, so yeah, there's been right plenty of
stuff coming out today, so yeah, it's good.